


hold my heart

by magicofthepen



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Relationship Study, starring romana's simultaneous fear of and desire for intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27380182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicofthepen/pseuds/magicofthepen
Summary: Romana tries to hold other people at a distance. Leela makes it difficult.A study of touch, over the years.
Relationships: Leela/Romana II
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	hold my heart

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Arms by Christina Perri because wow that song has some major Romana/Leela vibes.

i. 

These are her walls — a thick collar around her neck, robes that drag too heavy, the sharp lines of her chin, the flash of her eyes. 

The deference to her office, the social expectations of the Time Lords. Never get too close. Look but don’t touch. 

Romana builds herself a prison, except this one is a choice. Binding the part of her that’s _so angry she wants to scream, so alone she wants to cry_ into a shadowy corner of her mind, chains tight enough to choke. The President of Gallifrey does not hurt. The President of Gallifrey does not _need_ anyone. 

These walls are necessary, to protect the world from her darkness ( _too angry, too broken_ ), to protect the world from her weakness ( _no one can catch her off guard if she doesn’t let them in, not again, never again_ —) These walls, she thinks, are built to last. 

_The first crack_ —

A shot fires through the air and Leela gasps. When Romana stumbles to her side, breath hissing in relief because the bleeding is a slow trickle and Leela will be just fine ( _why should she care why should she care, she doesn’t_ know _this woman_ ) — Leela’s eyes are steel. Her fingers, warm and strong, close around Romana’s wrist, and Romana flinches. 

As Leela springs to her feet, she lets go. But throughout the rest of the day, Romana finds herself touching her wrist occasionally, lightly, as if she can still feel the echoes of fingerprints. 

ii. 

There are rules, unspoken. There is a cool detachment, mixed into the very air of their world, stuck so deep into Romana’s lungs she wonders how Leela’s managed to avoid breathing it in. 

Leela’s engaged, grounded, asking questions no one else thinks to voice, so aware of the world around her on some granular level. She can’t see the way time dances and breaks, but she can see the here and now, perhaps more clearly than any of them. 

Leela asks and she insists and she intrudes, and it’s like breathing new air for the first time since Etra Prime. 

She insists and she intrudes, circling and standing too close. They are together on a planet that might explode — with a timonic fusion device or with a war, it’s unclear — and Leela grips Romana’s arm. 

It’s a question ( _do you know what you’re doing?_ ) and it’s so much more — a rejection of the social norms that dictate the President is to be acknowledged but never approached. The air itself was supposed to guard her, saturated by deference, except _deference_ and _Leela_ don’t go together at all, and why does that feel like such a relief? 

“I need someone to watch my back. A presidential bodyguard,” Romana says, on impulse, and Leela smiles. 

iii.

A week later, Romana’s standing in her bedroom with her robes rolled up off her arm because the tussle with the servitor droid had torn the sleeve and torn up the skin underneath too, and she’s only just noticing.

 _I can do this myself_ , Romana nearly protests, as Leela wipes dried blood out of the scrape, the cloth warm and wet. This isn’t right, this is the peeling away of the fabric that is her _shield armor prison_ , her bare skin humming as Leela presses lightly against it. 

Romana was poked and prodded by physicians after Etra Prime. This is — this is different. They aren’t in a medical bay; they’re sitting on the couch in Leela’s rooms after Romana went to check in on her. Leela is close enough that Romana can study the way her teeth scrape against her lower lip and her eyebrows wrinkle in concentration, far closer than any physician would dare approach. It’s not clinical, somehow. It’s doesn’t feel like an obligation, like a job, like — 

Except of course it’s a job ( _don’t be absurd_ ). It’s a duty; Leela’s the presidential bodyguard and her president was injured, however minorly.

Out of the corner of her eye, Leela’s eyes flicker, soften. Her fingers brush Romana’s elbow, and it — it isn’t anything. She’s human, it’s not like she can use touch to boost her telepathic signal. 

It isn’t anything. 

iv. 

The wildlands of Davidia are prickly and uncomfortable, and Romana’s tripping over her own feet, and Leela is grinning at her, enjoying this far too much.

Romana can pay attention, she’s not entirely helpless — but there’s still a thorny root that insists on cutting into her path when she’s not looking, or an uneven rock, and she knows she’s turning a brighter shade of red each time.

And then they’re half-climbing up a steep slope, and Romana’s legs are aching. Pebbles skitter under her feet, and she _falls_ , scrambling at dirt and letting out a strangled shout — and Leela’s hands are on her waist, catching her. Leela’s hair blows against Romana’s throat as she chuckles, and it vibrates through both their bodies.

Romana doesn’t move, fingernails still dug into dirt. Her hearts beat, _one-two-three-four_. Too fast. 

She’s scrambling for her dignity, but it has been so long since anyone touched her like this, gentle fingers against her hips, care radiating from the gesture even if Leela doesn’t fully trust her, or anyone, right now.

There was a time when Romana didn’t think she trusted anyone either. Every day, it’s more and more terrifying to be proven wrong. 

v.

Night is dangerous. Night is things creeping into her mind from the past and the future — hot blasts scarring her skin as the Daleks screech, the blood of her people spilling out in front of her in a war she can’t escape. Night is Pandora, dancing at the edge of her sleeping mind, her whispers icy and cutting.

Night is a thin robe clinging to her skin, and Leela sitting on her couch, insisting she will rest there for the night. She doesn’t say that she is guarding the door. Romana doesn’t say she will sleep easier knowing Leela is there. Neither of them have to say it.

Night is Romana asking _are you sure?_ and Leela staring, serious, _of course_. Night is Leela taking Romana’s shoulders between her hands, fingertips caressing skin through that too thin robe.

There are meant to be walls.

Leela is meant to be the warrior at her gate — _bodyguard_ , the one who keeps others from getting close. But _she_ is the one who is too close, always, but especially here in the dark, her touch equal parts protective and disarming. 

Leela smiles, quick and solemn. Her eyes are steady.

Romana stands too quickly. 

(It is not every night that Leela’s outside her bedroom door. It is not every night, because one night Romana wakes with the memory of blood seeping between her fingers and thinks of all the darkness she’s tried to lock inside and knows: _this is what happens when the walls crack._ )

vi.

And when the walls crack, they _crumble_. She is raging against the death of innocents at the Academy, at the scapheport, she is all the blazing fire of the Imperiatrix risen again, she is —

Leela’s voice is so quiet ( _We can no longer be friends. And I will leave Gallifrey, perhaps to die_ ), and Romana wishes, in one fleeting crush of despair, that Leela had chosen to kill her instead. 

There is every price to pay, when she lets herself _feel_.

And now there is a war, hundreds lost, the city in ruins, and Romana is alone in the center of her own devastation. 

But Leela is still here, alone in a different way, and _you’re not dying on_ this _planet_ and —

Leela is the one who was always too close, always the one reaching, catching, but this time Romana is the one who has her fingers outstretched, nearly begging. 

It is an implicit exchange, an unspoken promise. _You protect me, I protect you_

Leela takes her hand, and there is blood splattered on her arms, streaked on her face. Their skin presses palm to palm, fingers interwoven ( _stay_ ), and Leela could have died today, and Romana’s certain she won’t survive this war, not with the enemy living in her own skin, but they haven’t lost everything, not yet. 

vii.

She wakes in a medical station, breath caught in her chest, and Leela’s hands trace her wrists, the curve of her knuckles. Romana can hear her exhale in relief. 

_I’m fine_ , Romana lies, and she knows Leela knows she’s lying, but on some level — on some level it isn’t a lie.

She’s collapsed before, fallen to her knees after trying to pretend she could ignore twenty years worth of exhaustion. She’s collapsed before, and she woke in a medical station only to blackness, emptiness. Even the physician was only there because it was his job to make sure the President received all necessary medical treatment. 

Romana didn’t expect to survive Pandora. She didn’t expect Leela to _care_ , after Andred’s death. But Leela is here, this first time she wakes, and it’s impossible, and her hands are warm on Romana’s skin and they are alive, they are both still _alive_. 

viii.

Touch is a way of seeing, and it’s easy enough to explain aside the escalation — Leela’s palm on her back as they sneak into Elbon’s medical station, Leela’s hand squeezing hers, quick, as they reunite on what Brax pretends is a planetoid out of time, Leela brushing a strand of Romana’s hair after the first Axis world. 

It’s easy enough to explain, and yet this is still _more_ — Leela finds Romana in her bedroom after Brax’s disappearance and without a word, pulls her to her feet and _holds_ her, arms folding around Romana’s back and gripping her shirt, as if she’s in danger of slipping away too.

Romana — she doesn’t know what to _do_ , only that Leela is pressed against her more tightly than ever and Romana’s in danger of falling too far, too fast. She’s in danger of forgetting how to breathe.

She nudges her nose into Leela’s shoulder and touches her waist ever so lightly — fingertips, then palms. 

Leela makes a noise, murmurs an apology, and steps back — and then she’s gone, leaving Romana wondering — who was that for? 

ix. 

Touch is a way of seeing, and it’s easy enough to explain away the escalation — until Leela can see again, and she’s sharp and crackling with more energy than her body can contain.

Her fingertips trace the curve of Romana’s face, her eyes too intense, like she’s mapping vision onto memory. Her smile is delighted, that she has that chance.

Leela’s too close, her hand a blur tangling in Romana’s hair, and Leela is not the warrior at the gate, not her guard against the world, not anymore.

There is nothing protective about this touch — it isn’t healing Romana, or catching her, or holding her when she’s shattering inside — it is an embrace for its own sake, for nothing but the joy of it.

Romana smiles, fragile, and takes a step back.

There is every price to pay, when she lets herself feel. 

A week later, Leela is gone.

x. 

It is months, it is an eternity without her, and every echo lingers on Romana’s skin. Fingertips on her wrist, on her bare arm, palms on her waist — pulling her close in mourning, holding onto her in delight.

Romana is a Time Lord, a President. She builds her walls anew — take all those pieces that are aching, begging _come home_ and lock them inside. Tighten the chains enough to choke. 

It itches inside of her, that shadow corner place, that part of her that contains all the feelings she isn’t permitted. She builds herself a prison, and it’s _necessary_ because Leela slipped through the cracks once and she’s gone and ( _it hurts, it hurts to breathe —_ ) Romana can’t let herself break again ( _be still, be ice_ ). 

It doesn’t work.

xi.

The chains snap, link by link ( _I have lost a great deal. I have lost you_ ), until Romana is standing in the shattered remains of the walls she tried to rebuild, standing in Mancipia in a world on the verge of civil war, asking, begging, _please_ —

She takes Leela’s hand, and it’s warm, and their fingers still lock together so easily, like they weren’t meant to ever let go. 

_Please._ And Romana’s eyes aren’t hiding and neither are Leela’s, and they both can see. An implicit exchange, an unspoken promise.

_You help me, and I’ll help you._

xii.

When the chains break, they _shatter_ — the anger she wasn’t allowed to feel rearing its ugly head because maybe she really was chaining a monster in the deepest parts of herself ( _twenty years of not remembering what alive feels like, and now she can finally scream_ ).

The loneliness, sunk into her bones, inevitable. ( _The Daleks are her anguish to bear, her nightmare to face, and she won’t let her friends see, she won’t let them too close to the danger —_ )

But after, _after_ , she isn’t alone, she _isn’t alone_ —

Leela stays in her office, as the world is reborn around them.

Romana doesn’t know who moves first — but they are colliding, laughing, hugging tight enough to steal her breath, and wrapped in Leela’s arms is the closest she’s felt to freedom in decades.

Romana breathes in Leela’s hair, and her skin is humming under the trails of Leela’s fingertips, and their hearts thunder against each other, hers more full than they have ever been, and she thinks: _this must be what it means, to be happy_.

xiii. 

It’s years and years, and time isn’t easy, isn’t always kind, because that’s how the universe works. That’s why they’re standing in a dying ship, and Romana feels a little like dying, too. 

But after they return, after time settles around them and kicks up strange echoes, Leela stumbles to Romana’s room in the middle of the night.

Night is dangerous. Night is Leela’s tousled hair against her cheek, and Romana huddled under her blanket. Night is warmth, as Leela presses close, as their arms and legs tangle together, skin to skin. Night is Leela, whispering — _I dreamt you abandoned me_ , and Romana breathing — _never, not in this universe, I will always find you, I promise_. 

Night is dying in each other’s arms and waking up alive, together.

xiv. 

The remains of those broken walls are still at her feet, still there for Romana to trip over as Leela lays her head on her shoulder. 

Romana shivers in the dark. There is every price to pay, when she lets herself — 

Skin to skin, it means _danger, too close_ , it means _alive_ , it means —

They wake, and the starlight is still pouring through the window. Night is dangerous, it’s the dark place where the cruelest pieces of her mind crash to the surface. Night is dangerous, except Leela is holding her and tracing the edge of her jaw, except Romana is nestling closer, _closer_ , nose brushing from Leela’s forehead to cheek, except it doesn’t feel like danger at all, when their lips meet in the shadows.

Romana kisses her and kisses her and kisses her, and Leela tastes like the brightest stars in the sky, like the inevitability of sunrise.

xv.

Night is shedding armor, brushing aside the air that was meant to divide them. Night is dizzying, but night is gentle, in a way that must be impossible. 

Night is — it’s night, weeks later, when Leela pulls Romana’s too thin nightdress over her head ( _hands brush her bare arms, like an echo_ ), and Romana’s hands slide under the hem of Leela’s shirt, and Leela’s fingers dig into her hips and —

Romana has never felt more real ( _here, alive_ ). Leela kisses down her neck, her hands sliding to the bare skin of Romana’s stomach — and it is an unspoken promise ( _you are safe here_ ), it is the opposite of a prison ( _you can be free here_ ). 

Leela is beautiful, even here in the dark, especially here in the dark, and as Romana presses against her, skin to skin, it’s everything she tried so hard not to want, it’s a cliff’s edge, it’s starting to fall but flying instead. 

xvi.

Their lives were not meant to touch, the Time Lord President and the human warrior. Their lives began so far apart, and for so long their paths remained out of sync, just missing each other. 

The universe dropped down on their shoulders time and again — loss and warfare, an anger that burns, a loneliness that breaks. Their lives were meant to hurt, perhaps.

( _There is every price to pay._ )

 _Not here_ , Romana breathes, as Leela sleeps in her arms under the rising light of the suns. _Not now._

There were meant to be walls.

Night tumbles into day, and their stolen moments do too, until Romana knows, _decides_ , that no matter how long she lives she will never forget the shape of Leela’s smile or the sound of her whisper against Romana’s ear or the warmth of her bare skin as they lie wrapped up in each other.

( _This must be what it means, to be happy._ )

Their lives were not meant to touch, but they did. They do.


End file.
